Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Quick impressions:first of all it's so butt ugly that nobody is going to keep a crosshair on it for long: good.I also notice that the rear wheels denote a higher load than the front wheels, either it's the engine department, or, more likely, a young official have invited another of the opposite sex there, eager to test "some aspects of the seating".

Weird how some of the props have a belt drive, and some look like they have a gearbox drive. The front and rear on the observers left in that picture are both big honkin' belt drive, but the two middle props have a gearbox.

The crazy thing is, it's not even symmetrical... the front prop on the right is gearbox!

Why not take an existing - proven - helicopter platform and attach features that would make the aircraft "roadable"?

Most helicopters already have wheels & a steering mechanism. All they're missing is a small engine to drive the aircraft, upgraded suspension and a few other standard features that can probably be borrowed from an existing truck design.

We have computers these days. A helicopter is barely humanly flyable as it is, this is of course much more complicated, but we don't need people to control it with Bowden wires. If stability were an actual issue, the Nighthawk would never have gotten off the ground!

Looks like they're trying to make a very small helicopter, with a very small overhead outline to avoid getting blades stuck on things when they land, and when they drive in farther to the position of the wounded.

Does anyone know if folding blades would have worked just as well as using 6 smaller rotors? What is the trade-off in reliability & performance between folding blades vs. multiple small rotors?

Folding blades or aligning blades along the center axis takes time. Since this is touted for medevac uses you want something that can get in and out of small spaces quickly. I'm interested to see its flying stability.

If they use this concept for a vehicle that can occasionally 'hop' over obstructions in its path, then it might be useful in certain scenarios. Its less intriguing as a copter that can drive on the ground.

Well, it's not like helicopters have the resilience of battleships, either. I'd imagine this device is designed to operate as a connection between the front and the rear, not for continuous operation ON the front. In many scenarios, the vulnerability may well be limited. (Also, I recall the early medevac helicopters having no armor as well. Did anyone reject them from service for that reason?)

skids dont taxi on the ground, but 3-7 feet up.but even among the wheeled variety many of them lack actual direct steering control of the nose/tail wheel, and instead rely on the tail rotor for ground steering. a few do have a steerable wheel, but they are the exception; for many types the wheel simply casters, especially in taildraggers. youll find it more on the larger birds, like the CH53 and Chinook, though in the Chinooks case, IIRC, only one tail wheel is steerable, and the other casters, though I don

This is the first roadable aircraft that looks like it could work. No fancy linkages to have one motor run it all, or spiffy folding wings or anything that hasn't been created yet. This actually has demonstrated technologies behind it and looks like it's much further along that a pretty 3D rendering. Even if the UAV portion doesn't work, this application could be useful in more than just the battlefield. This could be used for civilian medivac or other urgent situation where a suitable landing location is easily accessible.

some guy in NZ was going for certification of the worlds first turbo diesel airplane some years ago, cant find a citation at the moment, last I heard he was nearing the end of his flight time trials. also, Cessna offer a turbo diesel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_diesel_engine [wikipedia.org]

Lol, what a joke. You have no idea what is useful in a battlefield, these would be expensive wreckage after 1-2 rounds from a kalashnikov.

Guess what? The sad truth is that already applies to most helicopters, yet we still use lots of them. We just don't use them in the thick of combat, one or two aside. They serve support roles, where they don't have to try to dodge a lot of bullets.

I stopped reading not too far in when I encountered this little gem of stupidity; The trouble is, helicopters can only land in nice, big open areas that can be miles from where they're needed..

Um, not quite. Military helicopter pilots are trained to land in spaces much smaller than you might think possible. Military helicopters are also equipped with winches - they don't need to land.

This [youtube.com] is an extreme example - but it should give you the general idea. Sadly, the video is missing the most interesting part - the helicopter flying blind and *backwards* out of the narrow part of the canyon.

Hey, I think I've probably as much experience behind the stick as the article's author. Therefore, I can speak on this subject with internet levels of authority. In my experience, if you don't have a big, open area to land, you've just got to tell your crew to bail out and then do so yourself. The helo generally has enough momentum to avoid landing on you and all you need to do is deploy your parachute and you'll land safely.

At that point, you've destroyed your ride but a new one will spawn at base. The i

If the priority is evacuating injured soldiers from the front line, I would be concerned about this vehicle's ability to navigate narrow roads. We have a lot of warfare taking place in urban environments and your evacuation technology is only as good as its ability to get out of a given situation.

It's NOT more flexible, except in hairball wacko scenarios that never happen in reality.

A UH-60 or a OH-6 have better range, better speed, much better maneuverability, and either higher cargo capacity or radically more nimble. And saying these things could be used as a UAV is completely brain-dead - they're so slow and vulnerable that they'd never survive in a hostile environment. At least helicopters have the speed and maneuverability for quick insert and retrieval missions.

The Harrier VTOL Jet as used by the USMC can only take off vertically with a reduced fuel and weapons payload. The aircraft was deployed in a forward support role using roads as runways. It could land vertically with it's nose pointing in the right direction for takeoff after refuelling and re-arming.I would imagine that this device would fulfill a similar role.

I worked on the USMC Harrier flight testing in the UK back in the 1970's. I also saw it in operation in W. Germany.

These mish-mash flying cars always offer nothing but the worst of both worlds. This thing, like other similar concepts in the past, is not robust enough to make a proper ground vehicle. This is worse because it's intended to go off-road and needs to be armored. But it's inescapable that those two aspects will be compromised to ensure it can get airborne. And the compromises go in both directions, because as an aircraft it will be slow and clumsy.

What does purpose does this thing even serve that isn't already better filled by a helicopter? If a ground vehicle is necessary for a mission there are already numerous ways to deliver and retrieve them using a variety of aircraft. I also recall reading that someone is working on a sort of airframe that mates up to an armored vehicle for transport and separates upon delivery. That seems like a far smarter idea than this.

And since when is "roadable" a word? It always comes off as a pathetic attempt to legitimize a concept; the idea that something is so new and so awesome they had to make up a new term.

(There's a reason by single bladed copters are still the best choice... they are naturally stable).

You're a lot better off landing on 2/4 engines (if one fails, you'll have at least one opposing pair) in a quad than on 0/1 engines in a heli. Or better yet, you could have eight engines, and still function on six. And quads are very stable.

This is pretty much the future of where helicopter technology is going to go, I think. Eight small propellers are way cheaper and simpler than one huge complex rotor system. The main downside is no autorotation in the case of engine failure (maybe a back-up parachute will be the solution).

Also the eight engines will probably be replaced by a single or pair of turbines driving generators and then eight small motors will used to drive the propellers/rotors. That reduces complexity and allows the rotors to be controlled electrically/electronically for precise control.